Psalm Meditation 555
Fifth Sunday of Epiphany
February 6, 2011

Psalm 95
1 O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!
8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways."
11 Therefore in my anger I swore, "They shall not enter my rest."
(NRSV)

When things are going well for us it is easier to sing and praise God than when things get rough. When things are not going our way we need to be reminded that God has already done more for us than we could acknowledge in a lifetime or two. This seems to be what the psalmist is doing here. There is the rehearsal, the remembering, of all that God has done so far which then ends with the reminder that God is not bound to act favorably toward us if we are too quick to find fault with God.

There have always been those who believe that we are treated the way we act toward God. If we question God too harshly we will be punished or ignored as God returns our attitude in divine measure. If we are faithful to God then God will certainly be faithful to us in a manner that is bigger and broader than ours as if God is the magnifying mirror image of us and our attitude and behavior.

While we do see God’s activity through the filter of our own attitudes and actions I believe that God is more than a larger mirror image of us. God has decided to love us and care for us and there is not anything we can do to change that. We can decide whether to return God’s love; we can’t make God stop loving us. God is the creator of all who chooses to love us. We can praise God for all of that and love God in return or we can wonder why God doesn’t jump through every hoop we set up to test God’s loyalty to us.

January 31, 2011